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From the article: > In 2022, Truth Social posted a loss of $50 million, with net sales of just $1.4 million. It lost $23 million in the first half of this year

by rewmie 3y ago

From the article: > In 2022, Truth Social posted a loss of $50 million, with net sales of just $1.4 million. It lost $23 million in the first half of this year, with net sales of $2.3 million. Does anyone have any insight on whether spending over $23 million to keep a social network afloat for six months is a reasonable operational cost? It seems a bit too pricey for the kind of operation it seems to be.

sgt 3y ago
When last did you look at your AWS bill?
- fs111 3y ago
  One is allowed to rent servers elsewhere
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Like Yandex Cloud.
    - rewmie 3y ago
      I see what you did there.
viraptor 3y ago
I was just going to post that part. It's crazy considering they run a slightly modified mastodon backend and frontend. Sure, they needed some mobile devs to brand it (maybe contractors?) and some backend devs and ops (those would likely be permanent). But that still feels way off what they spend. For CDN they're using cloudflare, probably on enterprise pricing which would save them lots of money on image transfer. To be clear, this is only looking at the costs of running the platform itself. I don't know if they have a moderation team or spend lots on advertising.
omarfarooq 3y ago
Every one in the 'value' chain at the organization is going to seek to maximally extract funds from it since management from the apex down has no competence to know proper budget and planning on a software product.
- carlmr 3y ago
  It's scam artists all the way down.
- benj111 3y ago
  Yes, I can't imagine trump engenders a were all in it together, and share the proceeds mentality. And I don't imagine he hires based on actual competence either.
vidarh 3y ago
Can't answer that without user numbers, but presumably a large portion of that will have gone towards (failing, clearly, given the sales numbers) attempts at growing the business, and their costs if they were merely trying to keep it afloat would be a tiny fraction of that. The big question to me would be what the activity and user trajectory is, and what's stopping both that and their sales from increasing faster. If their user acquisition cost is so high that they're not able to build an attractive audience fast enough to see a sharper increase in revenue than this, they have a serious problem (and a real reason to worry that their cost of acquiring users will be higher than their customers lifetime value)
DonHopkins 3y ago
Considering the harsh but obvious Truth that everyone involved in that burning dumpster fire of a social media network is a huge grifter, a Rat King's nest of grifters grifting grifters grifting grifters is incredibly expensive to run. When Trump calls his enemies "vermin", it's not just literal Nazi propoganda, it's also textbook psychological projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king >A rat king is a collection of rats whose tails are intertwined and bound together in some way. This could be a result of an entangling material like hair, a sticky substance such as sap or gum, or the tails being tied together. >A similar phenomenon with squirrels has been observed, which has had modern documented examples. >Etymology >The original German term, Rattenkönig, was calqued into English as rat king, and into French as roi des rats. The term was not originally used in reference to actual rats, but for persons who lived off others. Conrad Gesner in Historia animalium (1551–58) stated: "Some would have it that the rat waxes mighty in its old age and is fed by its young: this is called the rat king." Martin Luther stated: "finally, there is the Pope, the king of rats right at the top." Later, the term referred to a king sitting on a throne of knotted tails.[1] >An alternative theory states that the name in French was rouet de rats (or a spinning wheel of rats, the knotted tails being wheel spokes), with the term transforming over time into roi des rats,[1] because formerly French oi was pronounced [we] or similar; nowadays it is pronounced [wa].
thejohnconway 3y ago
Mastodon.social is comparable I'd say, and runs on $240k a year. The reported user numbers are about half for Mastodon.social, but it's not clear the numbers for Truth.social are as rigorous, an order of magnitude difference in cost.
- Sai_ 3y ago
  * two orders of magnitude actually. 73,000/240 ≈ 300.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Mastodon.social is also federated, so will end up doing a lot more work. If anything, you'd expect a totally isolated instance to be cheaper to run.

by rewmie 3y ago

sgt 3y ago

When last did you look at your AWS bill?

fs111 3y ago
One is allowed to rent servers elsewhere
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  Like Yandex Cloud.
  - rewmie 3y ago
    I see what you did there.

viraptor 3y ago

I was just going to post that part. It's crazy considering they run a slightly modified mastodon backend and frontend. Sure, they needed some mobile devs to brand it (maybe contractors?) and some backend devs and ops (those would likely be permanent). But that still feels way off what they spend. For CDN they're using cloudflare, probably on enterprise pricing which would save them lots of money on image transfer. To be clear, this is only looking at the costs of running the platform itself. I don't know if they have a moderation team or spend lots on advertising.

omarfarooq 3y ago

Every one in the 'value' chain at the organization is going to seek to maximally extract funds from it since management from the apex down has no competence to know proper budget and planning on a software product.

carlmr 3y ago
It's scam artists all the way down.
benj111 3y ago
Yes, I can't imagine trump engenders a were all in it together, and share the proceeds mentality. And I don't imagine he hires based on actual competence either.

vidarh 3y ago

Can't answer that without user numbers, but presumably a large portion of that will have gone towards (failing, clearly, given the sales numbers) attempts at growing the business, and their costs if they were merely trying to keep it afloat would be a tiny fraction of that. The big question to me would be what the activity and user trajectory is, and what's stopping both that and their sales from increasing faster. If their user acquisition cost is so high that they're not able to build an attractive audience fast enough to see a sharper increase in revenue than this, they have a serious problem (and a real reason to worry that their cost of acquiring users will be higher than their customers lifetime value)

DonHopkins 3y ago

Considering the harsh but obvious Truth that everyone involved in that burning dumpster fire of a social media network is a huge grifter, a Rat King's nest of grifters grifting grifters grifting grifters is incredibly expensive to run. When Trump calls his enemies "vermin", it's not just literal Nazi propoganda, it's also textbook psychological projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king >A rat king is a collection of rats whose tails are intertwined and bound together in some way. This could be a result of an entangling material like hair, a sticky substance such as sap or gum, or the tails being tied together. >A similar phenomenon with squirrels has been observed, which has had modern documented examples. >Etymology >The original German term, Rattenkönig, was calqued into English as rat king, and into French as roi des rats. The term was not originally used in reference to actual rats, but for persons who lived off others. Conrad Gesner in Historia animalium (1551–58) stated: "Some would have it that the rat waxes mighty in its old age and is fed by its young: this is called the rat king." Martin Luther stated: "finally, there is the Pope, the king of rats right at the top." Later, the term referred to a king sitting on a throne of knotted tails.[1] >An alternative theory states that the name in French was rouet de rats (or a spinning wheel of rats, the knotted tails being wheel spokes), with the term transforming over time into roi des rats,[1] because formerly French oi was pronounced [we] or similar; nowadays it is pronounced [wa].

thejohnconway 3y ago

Mastodon.social is comparable I'd say, and runs on $240k a year. The reported user numbers are about half for Mastodon.social, but it's not clear the numbers for Truth.social are as rigorous, an order of magnitude difference in cost.

Sai_ 3y ago
* two orders of magnitude actually. 73,000/240 ≈ 300.
rsynnott 3y ago
Mastodon.social is also federated, so will end up doing a lot more work. If anything, you'd expect a totally isolated instance to be cheaper to run.